Giveaway: Mechatar Robot

The wee ones love the traditional “boy” toys. Anything that is dinosaur related or mechanical or on the computer or remote controlled or the like is right in their wheel house. A toy that combines all of those? Let’s just say that the Mechatar robot we recently received to review is already on its second set of batteries.

The Mechatar robots are “blended reality” toys. They are amongst the group where you can play with them both online and offline, giving them more chances to keep kids’ interests. Offline they are a remote controlled robot – ours is a T-Rex looking remote controlled guy named Wrexx – where you can do more than simply drive him around. You can also complete “missions” that you purchase online from your account using coins you earn via online activities or battle amongst other Mechatar robots, the latter of which we obviously didn’t try out yet, as we had just the one robot. This alone kept the wee ones entertained for hours as they’d drive all over the house pretending to shoot and battle various things from my foot to our cats to the table leg.

Online is a whole world. You create a free account where you can battle other Mechatar robots, complete challenges, and “train” your own robot. There are three training battles you can do each day to earn experience points and coins. The experience points move you up in levels while you can use your coins to purchase additional weapons, equipment, sounds, missions for offline, etc. You can also earn coins by completing the online challenges.

I like the fact that the battles match you up with robots who have similar experience as yours so that you aren’t constantly defeated by an expert who’s just beating up on everyone. We’ve won our fair share of battles, but we’ve also lost some. That said, the attacks in the battles use eight different elements, all of which are interconnected and some of which overpower the others. Trying to figure out what attack is best to use at what point and which attacks will be most effective against your opponents and versus their most recent attack is still a challenge for us, and I’ve been trying to help the wee ones figure that out. We’ll get there eventually, I’m guessing, but it’s somewhat frustrating for them.

The challenges are far less difficult for them. There are several different challenges you can complete (over and over, if you like) from pressing 1, 2, or 3 on your keyboard when bars light up together to clicking on the “go” box with your mouse when a line stops spinning or when a bar passes over a lit up section. Those games are easy enough for the wee ones, although they are progressively more challenging to the point that even I don’t have the reflexes necessary after awhile. The gradual increase in difficulty means that the wee ones feel like they have some success while still being challenged – and the use of the hand eye coordination is great practice for Mister Man.

Once you’ve played online, you can sync your robot to your online account to download any missions or additional weapons or sounds that you’ve purchased. Supposedly it’s an easy connection – simply plug the USB port into your computer and push the other end into your Mechatar after which a browser window will pop up taking you to the Mechatar site. It wasn’t so easy for us. I actually tried two separate days to connect our Wrexx to the computer before emailing the customer service who replied simply that I wasn’t connecting the port in the robot well enough – “It is a little tricky to get the USB cord properly plugged in to the Mechatar.” As this is a child’s toy that I had difficulty properly connecting as a fairly tech-savvy adult, that wasn’t what I was hoping to hear. We were able to properly connect the robot after this when I used more force than I had thought necessary to push the connector into the robot. I would prefer that the wee ones’ toys be easier for them to operate to avoid frustration.

There is lots and lots more to say about the robots, but we haven’t had nearly enough time to fully explore the worlds and the robot. The wee ones are truly enjoying playing with him, although I’m a little leery of the focus on battles and such. There is no gore online, however, which made me happy. For a $39.99 toy, this does have a wide interest level not just for Mister Man but also for Little Miss. While she isn’t a girlie girl, this is a toy with cross gender appeal even though it’s marketed towards boys. You can find them this fall nationwide at stores like Target, Radio Shack, Amazon, Toys R’Us and iloveRobots.com.

Interested in this CleverRobot? I have a coupon code to share with you: MECHMOM will get you a 10% discount on your purchase at the iloveRobots.com site through November 30, 2011. I also have one Mechatar robot to give away to a lucky reader. So what do you have to do to win? First of all, let me stress that you must follow all the rules. If you do not follow the rules, your entry will not count!

This contest is open until Monday September 26 at 7pm CST. I must have a valid way to reach you, so leave me your email address in your comment or be sure your profile has your email address visible. No duplicate comments will count. This giveaway is open to US residents age 18 and older. Winners will be selected via random.org and must respond within 24 hours of being notified by me or I will select a new winner.

Mandatory Entry: Visit the Mechatar website and tell me which of the Mechatar robots you'd most like to win.

NOTE: In order for you to see the Mechatar line up, visitors to the site need to click on “play now” then “register” but no information needs to be submitted.

Bonus Entries (leave a comment for each entry - if you put it all in one comment, I'll count it as one entry):

1) Earn one additional entry for following me on Twitter, then tweeting this contest with the following tweet: "Have you seen the new Mechatar blended reality robots? Win one from @honestandtruly http://bit.ly/oicGkL" (leave a link to your tweet as your comment and make sure you do all the steps!)
2) Earn one additional entry by following this review blog publicly via Google Friend Connect.
3) Earn one additional entry by following my “regular” blog Honest & Truly! publicly via Google Friend Connect.

And no, you won't earn any extra entries for it, but you will get good karma for following me on Facebook, too!

Good luck!

I was selected to participate in this sponsored post series by Clever Girls Collective. In the interest of full disclosure, I received a Wrexx Mechatar for review purposes by the Clever Girls Collective. I was also compensated for this campaign. That said as always, all opinions expressed remain my own.